Japanese PM struggles to maintain majority

PM - Monday, 28 May , 2007 18:22:00

Reporter: Shane McLeod

MARK COLVIN: We heard earlier in our whaling story about friction between Australia and Japan but it can't be too bad, the Prime Minister John Howard announced today that his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe would become the first Japanese leader to address Australia's parliament.

The speech to the joint house sitting has been scheduled for Mr Abe's APEC visit in September.

It'll be a historic moment for Mr Abe, if he makes it, that is.

The Japanese Prime Minister could possibly lose his majority in upper house elections in July and today he suffered a major blow with the suicide of his Agriculture Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka.

I asked our Japan correspondent Shane McLeod about the scandals that led to the minister's death.

SHANE MCLEOD: It'd had been a series of scandals that had been building up over the last few months.

I mean the big one that has been bubbling away for some time involves contracts within Japan's Forestry agency, the corporation that does work for Japan's Forestry agency. And there were links between companies involved in that scandal and the Minister.

There's also been issues raised over expenses in his office, expensive bottles of mineral water and things like that.

And it seems to have just festered for some time and while no-one's directly linking those events and what's happened today, it does seem that the Minister has been under a lot of pressure for a long time.

MARK COLVIN: There seems to be some suggestion that he had a rent-free office, but was still claiming the rent in some way?

SHANE MCLEOD: That's right.

Many, many scandals that have affected him over recent weeks, which did seem to be building up towards a Parliamentary Hearing that was expected to be happening this afternoon. And it may be that some of that pressure has building on the Minister.

And it was when he didn't turn up for work today that staff in his office became concerned and that's when they went to the Parliamentary accommodation building, the apartment where the Minister was staying and that's when he was discovered.

MARK COLVIN: This is obviously a dreadful individual tragedy for his family and the people around him but it is also a much broader political tragedy for the Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

SHANE MCLEOD: That's right Mr Matsuoka was very close to Shinzo Abe. He was one of the key figures helping him to become Japan's Prime Minister last year. And it's thought that this will now put a lot of pressure on Mr Abe and his choices of Cabinet Minister. And it may also put a lot of pressure on Japan's parliamentary process itself, the way that things have been developing over the lasts couple of years.

We've seen a series of these scandals build up within the parliamentary process and a lot of the time there doesn't seem to be a very effective resolution to them.

We've seen Opposition Leaders come and go as a result of these type of scandals. We've seen ministers under a lot of pressure over their public comments, yet there doesn't seem to be very much result of that through the parliamentary process.

MARK COLVIN: And so where does it leave the Prime Minister and his government in the opinion polls?

SHANE MCLEOD: Well, they have been improving over recent months. They really hit rock bottom back in March but after some successful measures, the recent visit by the Chinese Premier seemed to give Shinzo Abe a bit of a bounce in the polls, things were looking up somewhat.

But they're heading towards an election in the upper house of parliament next month, rather in July and that will be a very crucial election for Shinzo Abe if he can retain control of the upper house, then he will get to implement some of the rather conservative political agenda that he's been trying to promote. But if he doesn't do well in that election, then his political career could be derailed.

MARK COLVIN: So if he doesn't do well in that upper house election, who is likely to benefit?

SHANE MCLEOD: Well that again is difficult to see. It could be forces within the Liberal Democratic Party itself, those who didn't quite like the way that the whole transition from Junichiro Koizumi was handled to Mr Abe.

Or it could be the Opposition but until now the opposition's been in something of disarray. It has a new leader who's been in place for a little longer than Shinzo Abe's been in place, but he doesn't seem to have been able to make many inroads, that's Mr Ozawa.

And the opposition parties themselves are very much left out of this process. We just saw some legislation pass this week that was very unpopular, yet the Opposition wasn't able to gain much traction with that as a domestic political issue.

MARK COLVIN: Well just about ever since the Second World War, one party has really dominated Japanese politics, and that's unlikely to change. So it's most likely to be some kind of factional wrangling that occurs.

SHANE MCLEOD: That's right. Although Mr Abe has gone some way to dealing with some of those factional issues. The big fear was that he would continue the fairly conservative policies of Junichiro Koizumi, in fact driving a wedge between many of those factions within the LDP.

Mr Abe has tended to be a little bit more inclusive. He's been more prepared to consider the various views within the LDP but he may face pressure if he doesn't perform well in this upper house election.